The Northern Elders Forum (NEF) said President Muhammadu Buhari’s refusal to stop the Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), Godwin Emefiele from going ahead with the deadline of the naira swap implementation may mar the chances of his party, the All Progressives Congress APC in the coming general elections.
Speaking on Channels Television programme” The 2023 Verdict” on Tuesday evening, NEF Spokesman,Hakeem Baba- Ahmed questioned the rationale of the president in encouraging the introduction and implementation of the cash policy which has caused a lot of pain and anger in the country.
According to him , for Buhari to allow such a policy to birth so close to election and not doing anything to call the CBN governor to order to lessen the suffering of innocent Nigerians means that the president does not care and is in full support of what is going on
Baba – Ahmed said the ban of old naira notes and scarcity of the new notes” is a major demarketting thing” for the APC
” If the worst enemy of APC had design strategy for them to lose this election,he couldn’t have chosen a better fiasco around the reprinting of the naira “
The NEF Spokesman said it was ironic that Buhari would go from place to place campaigning for the candidates of the APC when he is actually deep in policies that have stirred up anger that may truncate the party’s chances in the February 25 and March 11 elections .
“There is a lot of anger and to see a situation where the President rather appears unwilling or incapable of reining in Emefiele and say, ‘Listen, perhaps we can allow the old naira and the new naira co-exist for the next six months’.
“President Buhari apparently doesn’t listen to anybody. Emefiele says I will do what I should do because the President has got my back. And Nigerians are saying we know the governor of the CBN is not who is doing all these; it is the President.
“If the President doesn’t want all this suffering and considers the other options, the governor of the CBN won’t get away with these things he is getting away with.”
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